I have some bad news, cinephiles: Plasma is dead. It won't see a resurgence. It's not pining for the fjords. It's passed on. It's ceased to be. It's expired and gone on to meet its maker. Actually, it already met its maker and its maker looked at it and said, "Well, this technology's rubbish now, let's bin it." I guess the parrot sketch doesn't always hold up.
LG was one of the two remaining pillars of plasma screens in the market after Panasonic shut down production last year. Now LG is leaving plasma as well, according to Reuters. Sony abandoned plasma years ago. Toshiba, Vizio, and JVC don't make plasma screens anymore. Chinese manufacturers like TCL and Hisense, meanwhile, haven't given plasma so much as a glance.
We'll get a final verdict at CES, when Samsung, and most other HDTV manufacturers, will unveil their plans for 2015. If Samsung doesn't announce a plasma screen, plasma will officially be dead.
Let's be honest: Plasma hasn't been the same since Pioneer left the television market and took its superlative Kuro plasma screens with it. After that, Samsung and Panasonic put out a small handful of excellent plasma televisions, but the majority of plasma panels have been budget and midrange models with mediocre performance. They've since been replaced entirely by LED-backlit LCD screens, which have dropped in price to the point that they're dirt cheap even compared to low-end plasmas from two years ago.
This has been a long time coming, and it's not a particularly big deal. OLED technology is the future of high-end HDTVs, and after testing a couple in the lab, I can say with certainty that it's capable of outstripping plasma with contrast ratio, black level, and color accuracy. Look at the LG 55EC9300, the second OLED screen we've tested. It can display perfect black inside a contrast tunnel, meaning one part of the screen can produce absolutely no light even if there's a picture on another part of the screen. That was basically unheard-of, even for the best plasma screens. Add color that's very accurate out of the box and capable of exceeding the standard color space by a great deal with the change of a setting, and you can see how there just isn't much room for plasma anywhere in the market anymore.
It was a pipe dream several years ago, when plasma was still rightfuly held up as the best flat panel technology and most LCD televisions were lit by CCFLs, but times have changed. OLEDs are still enormously expensive, but they're getting more affordable by the quarter, and a $15,000 screen I tested in February has been bested by a $7,000 model I tested last month. In 2015, expect 55-inch OLEDs to scrape the $3,000 range.
Plasma still has some benefits when it comes to refresh speeds and motion processing. Of course, CRT still has some benefits, to which some of my more fanatical hardcore gamer fans can attest. They just aren't enough to overcome how economical and functional LED-backlit LCDs have become or how much performance potential is in OLED technology as it gets polished. I'm sorry, plasma fans, but plasma screens are dead. It's only a matter of time before Samsung takes its last parrot back to the shop.
For more, check out PCMag's round of The 10 Best HDTVs. For a trip down memory lane, check out LED vs. Plasma: Which HDTV Type Is Best?